(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Export-Import Bank, an independent federal agency, loaned more than $1 billion to the Mexican state oil company PEMEX in 2009 to support the company’s oil drilling in the southern Gulf of Mexico. The bank has another $1 billion in loans in the pipeline for 2010, unless Congress objects.

On May 27, after the British Petroleum oil spill, President Obama imposed a moratorium on U.S. deepwater drilling in the Gulf, effecting 33 deepwater drilling rigs in the region.

PEMEX [2]was the Export-Import Bank’s largest borrower in 2009 and has borrowed $8.3 billion from the U.S. federal government since 1998. Under the 2009 loan agreements, PEMEX agreed to contract with American firms and purchase equipment from American manufacturers in exchange for the money.

One loan, worth $600 million, went to finance the development of 18 oil and natural gas fields in the Bay of Campeche in the southern Gulf of Mexico. Campeche is the area where the majority of Mexico’s oil and gas production takes place and is located just north of the Yucatan Peninsula.

Another loan, worth $300 million, went to fund the building of oil production facilities in Mexico’s Cantarell offshore oil field, which provides a large portion of Mexico’s oil production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency[5] (EIA).